


With Tongue of Wood

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Grey Feathers [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Drama, Earth-3, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Mirror Universe, Names, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romanian pastries, backpacking Europe and learning how to person, multilingualism is a job skill, that also isn't an AU, the bakery AU nobody asked for, the continuing adventures of ex-Talon Grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He caught up with Haley’s Circus in Morocco, and watched a young man named Calvin Rose leap and spin through an aerial routine that showed perfectly respectable trajectory control. Good balance.</p><p>It would have been much better with a catcher. Trapeze was <em>always</em> better with two.</p><p>Grayson did not make himself known to any member of the circus. He did not know which of them had been in collusion with the Court all those years ago, and even had he been inclined to trust anyone, he would only have been putting them and himself at further risk.</p><p>Haley’s bumbling old clown had a better routine than anything that purple-haired idiot in Gotham ever did, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Tongue of Wood

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a poem by Stephen Crane. Calvin Rose is the canon rogue Talon from the _Night of Owls_ who was kidnapped in Dick's place. While some modern performers have changed this, traditionally _flying_ trapeze is a partnered activity, and solo acts are performed 'swinging' or 'static'--that is, at much lower speeds.
> 
> Warning for discussion of sleep deprivation intentionally inflicted on a minor, and resultant insomnia. Warning for a child being threatened with a weapon by a third party. Why do my bad guys keep taking little hostages? This is like the fourth time.

 

Sleep grew difficult, abruptly, after about half a year of freedom.

It hadn’t been, at first. Sleep was something he needed a certain amount of to remain functional; he knew how to fit it into whatever span of time was available, and could shut himself down like the machine that Star City’s red-haired Arrow had once called him, in whatever location had been designated for the purpose. In his months in the national park, sleeping had become almost a pleasurable activity, not infrequently lasting as much as four or five hours at a stretch.

The problem was, the machine that was his body was _equally_ well-trained to wake up again when danger threatened. And at some point, soon after Nolan Burton brought him the information about the Graysons, while he was deep in the midst of plans to discretely leave the continent, that part of him finally noticed that he was, in fact, in danger _all the time_ now.

Not in a way that constant wakefulness could usefully guard against—the opposite, really—but this newly resurrected _sense of self-preservation_ was not, it emerged, a rational impulse. And it had begun waking him up. Every time there was a noise. Or a draft. Or his sleeping brain _thought_ it heard something.

The vulnerability of sleep had not been a problem before. Not since quite early in his training. Talon had learned to sleep only when permissible, and Owlman very rarely took offense at his doing so, so long as he was functional as soon as he was awakened. Even when he _had_ been woken with a blow, it hadn’t registered as a greater degree of helplessness than being around his king while awake, because it really wasn’t. It wasn’t as if Talon was allowed to _dodge_. Waking or sleeping, he had been equally defenseless, still. Fear could not have disturbed his sleep any more than the need to breathe. Fear had been his air.

But _now_ he jerked awake with his breath a little short and a weapon in his hand, over and over, certain that the Court had come for him.

Rationality slid through his fingers as sleep became more and more rare, and the… _frustration_ …of having his mind betray him like this was almost worse than the feeling of unravelling inch by inch. Discipline was all he _had._ The less rest he got, the more unsettled he grew, and the harder it became to shut himself down. Soon it began to tell on his reflexes, on his ability to mimic human expressions, began to make him easier to find and easier to ambush, and he would have torn this nervousness out of himself and carved it into bloody shreds if he could.

He was _safe,_ now, in a way he had never been in the Court, where he had nevertheless been able to drop off to sleep in an instant, in almost any condition. He once used to take advantage of the minutes that badly broken legs took to mend to catch some rest, and think nothing of it. There were _beds_ now, sometimes, and rooms with locks, and perimeters rigged with traps that had himself and no other inside them. And still, the fear.

And it wasn’t even that he had angered his master, and had a more terrible punishment chasing him than the retribution that had followed any mere irritation of old, bearing down on him with the weight of bitter expectation, that was disturbing his slumber. No. That was bad, but it was not what had taught him this sharp, new fear.

It was that now, he had something to lose.

He wondered if his father—that man he barely remembered, that dead face in the police record, that amber-marble laugh—had felt this way, in those weeks between the capture of the new Talon and the elimination of the ensuing complications. If he had been terrified that whatever had stolen his child would steal his wife, his life. Or if he had been too innocent to understand.

He wondered if the President who had leapt from his bed (almost) too late to save his children had been afraid. Or if he, too, had believed that he was safe.

Owlman _often_ went days at a time without resting, caught up in business or fulminating rage. But when he did, he slept hard and deep, at the heart of one of his fortresses. The sleep of the just, Grayson had heard it called. Idiots. It was the sleep of _certainty_.

He should have left North America months ago, but he had had a past to reclaim. Now, he supposed, he should consider his future, and one of its certainties was that if he wanted to survive free, he should not remain between Owlman’s seat of power and that of the United States federal government. Or even on the same continent.

At least no one would be looking for June’s assassin fleeing the country by cargo vessel in November.

The ship’s hold was dark, and close, and cold. One moment, crouched atop shipping crates, he felt safe—it was like a gently rocking, underground rooftop; it was _homey_ —and the next trapped, over and over in a sickening loop. The third time a crewman came close to discovering him, Grayson nearly killed him simply because it was something he could _do._

He held his peace. Bodies were easily disposed of at sea, but if disappearances led to a manhunt he really _would_ be trapped, here in the middle of the ocean.

The vessel brought him safely to Portugal without ever knowing about its stowaway, and Grayson disembarked. The barrier of the ocean between him and Gotham dampened the mute terror, and after a few days skulking around Portimão spying on everything he felt prepared to start impersonating a tourist, exchanging some of the money he’d brought with him and beginning to assemble a few more of the things other people considered necessities.

Young Americans were apparently not unknown for meandering their way across the face of Europe, living out of knapsacks, _by choice_. He had to stay on the move anyway, so for the moment it made an acceptable cover, though he would rather avoid notice altogether. His hair was dark and he was not too tall; once he developed a respectable tan, he might not _quite_ fit in anywhere, but he also shouldn’t stick out _too_ badly anywhere except the southern three-quarters of Africa (minus South Africa itself), either.

His route would be a balance of calculated risks—in places where he did not know the language, he was more memorable, but Owlman knew what languages he spoke and might focus more attention there, and Grayson’s accent was execrable _everywhere_ , because he’d been made multilingual to spy and give simple commands, not to converse, let alone blend into society. Even his American English still had wrong notes, although those mostly came down to lack of intonation.

He was working on it.

He was working on all of it.

Ice cream was too sweet, but he’d learned to like popcorn again, although it was so noisy he only ate it in secure locations, where he didn’t need to be alert for every sound. He liked greasy food but he had to eat it in tiny portions or he felt sick. He liked sitting still for hours, all alone, with no one to account for his time to. He liked public libraries. He liked hot showers, but they were even noisier than popcorn, so where possible he took baths instead, and took them heavily armed.

He hated dogs, and supermarkets, and the sound of children laughing. He hated shirts with tight collars. He liked wearing long pants, even in the African heat, and experienced a very minor personal crisis when he found himself torn between liking the _solidity_ of heavy boots, and being unable to abide the unnecessary weight and clumsiness of wearing them.

Eventually, in Paris, he invested in a fitted pair of light, reinforced-sole parkour boots that left him sufficient ankle flexibility, and had to grapple for the first time he could remember with the sense of being held hostage to a physical possession. That it would matter if he left his boots behind somewhere, and never went back for them.

They had been expensive, but they were not irreplaceable. It was a stupid way to feel. It was…annoying.

He decided he’d kill anyone who tried to take it from him.

He caught up with Haley’s Circus in Morocco, and watched a young man named Calvin Rose leap and spin through an aerial routine that showed perfectly respectable trajectory control. Good balance.

It would have been much better with a catcher. Trapeze was _always_ better with two.

Grayson did not make himself known to any member of the circus. He did not know which of them had been in collusion with the Court all those years ago, and even had he been inclined to trust anyone, he would only have been putting them and himself at further risk.

Haley’s bumbling old clown had a better routine than anything that purple-haired idiot in Gotham ever did, though. Grayson’s smile, as he watched it, seemed to take less conscious control of his muscles than usual. He could almost remember the man’s name. Was surprised by a memory of the thick, fruity scent he now recognized as alcohol, mingling with sawdust and the musk of great cat, as greasepaint glistened under the lights and old—good old—

No, he couldn’t remember. Maybe someday.

After that, he’d made his way along the Mediterranean from Morocco to Lebanon, and from Lebanon to Greece, and then north. He thought his mother had once mentioned Tblisi, visiting it or having family there, something—there was no memory of what she’d said, or the sound of her voice, but he had the strong, foggy recollection of experimentally pronouncing the place-name, rolling the opening phonemes around on a tongue that spoke often and readily; attached to the memory was no image of Mary Grayson’s face, merely the impression of her indulgent gaze.

Still, it was a memory of his mother. It was strange, to horde them now after over a decade striving to purge the attachment from his mind, but—well. All things changed.

He was changing.

It occurred to him in Berm that, even leaving aside the risk that supplying himself by theft might be leaving a trail no matter how much care he took, it was not…correct, to live that way. He had wanted to be among human beings, but even in a crowd he was isolated—his means of support was another secret to conceal, another lack of any commonality linking him to them.

(Lied to a young woman with a red leaf sewn to her knapsack, in a hostel in Lithuania: “My parents are paying for this, it’s a lot cheaper than grad school, you know, hah. They say it’s a good experience.” The stolen syllables round and heavy in his mouth and he wanted to spit them out and say, _my parents paid for this with their lives_ , except he did not know what _this_ would be, for their deaths had profited them nothing, nor him.

Another self-realization: he did not like to lie.

He still had to. So it went.)

In Romania, he put together some basic fake papers, and found a job. It was what they called under-the-table work, because his papers did not include a work visa—mostly he was responsible for loading and unloading the trucks that brought ingredients to the bakery, and carried finished products away to the several hotels and caterers that had standing orders. This kept him out of sight and kept the number of human interactions he had to juggle within a reasonable limit.

 _Cornulețe_ catered extensively to the tourist trade out its storefront, however, and the owner’s main reason for hiring him had been his ability to get by, albeit rather badly, in twenty languages. (The habit of perfection was strong—his first free day found him studying dictionaries for pastry-related vocabulary he had never possessed even in his native language. For the rest of his life, he would think of sweets only in Romanian.)

“It’s incredible, Anghelescu,” one of the apprentices told him, after a Chinese family left satisfied with plăcintă cu ciocolată and apricot gogoși, having been rescued from the bakery’s signature almond croissants, which had been initially and firmly believed to be the desired ‘full cake, sweet.’ Sometimes rudimentary language abilities were worse than none at all.

Grayson spared the young man a dubious look as he hefted fifty-pound sacks of flour over each shoulder. Baking supplies were not terribly heavy, and he doubted his currently displayed hauling prowess was impressing someone whose arms had been built up by years of kneading. (Artisanal bread products could not, apparently, be entrusted to kneading machines.)

Dumitrescu snorted. “When the boss shoves you out there to play interpreter, you turn into this smooth, charming footman like you’re waiting on royalty. I bet none of them ever guess that the rest of the time you’re such a grouchy bastard.”

“Not grouchy,” Grayson denied. Unfriendly, possibly. Close-mouthed, yes. Twitchy, occasionally. But none of the people here had ever seen him so much as seriously annoyed.

“Well, whatever you call it. What’s that about, anyway? You’re just not getting paid to be nice to us?”

He didn’t bother with words for that one. He was not being paid to be _outgoing_ with the rest of the staff, no. Which was good, because he doubted he could have managed that, six days a week. Not for this kind of money, definitely.

“Oh, step off his neck, Dumitrescu,” cut in Alina Dalca, the sole female apprentice. “Help me frost the amandine now, or stay late tonight to clean while the rest of us go home.”

“You only like him cuz he’s pretty,” Dumitrescu grumbled, but he shrugged away from the wall to go do his job.

“Maybe I like him because he is not forever flapping his tongue,” Dalca retorted. Looked up from her rows and rows of tiny sponge cakes and vat of chocolate glaze long enough to flash Grayson a smile.

“Bet none of the tourists even realize he’s not Romanian, either,” the other apprentice muttered, even as he took up a station and a ladle on the other side of the worktop.

Grayson deposited the flour beside the appropriate bin, into which the sacks would later be emptied, and turned to give Dumitrescu a reproachful look. He had no doubts as to his own ability to evade punishment for working illegally, but the baker could not know that, and besides, his teacher’s livelihood would be in danger if it was discovered he had knowingly employed illegal foreign labor. Antonin Vasile, who owned _Cornulețe,_ was a good master, and Dumitrescu should be more careful of him.

He looked, at least, appropriately abashed.

* * *

If Daciana, one of the girls who was employed to man the sales counter during peak periods, to allow the apprentices more time to work at baking, had not fallen ill, the day might have turned out differently. For better or for worse, Grayson was not sure. But she had called in with flu-like symptoms an hour before her shift, and Grayson was abruptly, as the ‘best-looking and least-essential’ member of kitchen staff, thrust into full-time customer service.

It was not too bad—he was not actually required to produce much non-functional conversation, especially when there was a line of customers and he was merely responsible for entering costs, accepting payment, and making change, while Alina Dalca retrieved the desired foodstuffs from within the glass display cases.

(Excepting, of course, when his services as translator were required, but pointing sufficed in seven out of ten cases of mutual unintelligibility.)

At three-forty-seven in the afternoon, when the lunch rush had vanished and the evening one not yet begun, there were two old women carefully browsing for the perfect treat, a Turkish man earnestly discussing with Alina Dalca the ideal pastry to bring his sweetheart, and a slightly harried mother trying to be patient as her son and daughter argued about who would choose what sweet, so the other could have a bit of it. (He gathered that both of them wanted both cherry-filled gogoși and the chocolate sour-cream cake, but both of them wanted the cake _more_ , and wished to be the one receiving a larger portion. Grayson thought the mother should step in and declare that each child should get half of each, or neither any, but perhaps she believed in letting them resolve such things for themselves.)

He had pulled on a clean pair of gloves and spent a few minutes peacefully transferring the fresh-baked row of little fruit tarts to fill their place at the top of the glass case nearest the cash register, alongside the frosted amacinta and other artful and hopefully tempting morsels.

The door swung open in a jingle of the little bell. Grayson glanced up, his paranoia utterly in abeyance in the face of entry being a common and desired activity—and felt ice he had not even realized was melted lock in around him again.

Four figures, masked with kerchiefs, all male, one blond, three tall; a different but overlapping three carrying firearms.

For a moment, he believed they were there for him. It was the manner of their movement—a resemblance across continents in unskilled career criminals, trying to make themselves seem larger than they were, to own the space around them with their inadequate strength. He had once worked with men such as these as his backup, subordinates—even retinue.

But the one in the lead brandished his stubby handgun and announced, _“This is a robbery. Nobody move,_ ” and he realized they were far less dangerous than the men he had served beside, and nothing to do with him.

Of all places to rob—a _bakery?_

Probably they believed it was a soft target.

Alina made a small, choked sound, but stood frozen with her hand on the knob that opened the chilled cabinet filled with alivenci and other custard-based dishes.

The old woman with the cane was hyperventilating. The other looked furious. The mother had fallen into a crouch, wrapping her arms around her children. The young man looked grey—in Grayson’s expert opinion, there was a good chance he was about to faint. At least that would keep him from doing anything stupid, as Grayson had noticed young men were wont to do.

The threatening gestures continued to be focused in all directions, but the bulk of the robbers’ attention moved now to Grayson, standing behind the counter, as expressionless and still as stone.

“You,” directed the spokesman—probably leader. He stood front, and forward, with the most swagger, and swaggered harder as he moved forward, leading his group toward the cash register in a V like a flock of migrating geese. His gloves were a size too large. Dark curls just protruded from under his hat. Sloppy. “Cake-boy. If you’re not too paralyzed with fear, open up that register. And start shoving the money into one of those white paper bags of yours.”

Fear?

This man thought Grayson was _afraid_ of him?

He did not think he had come closer to laughing since he had been the flying child in the old newspaper.

Not the moment to indulge that impulse, however. Obediently, he moved his hand to the lever that opened the cash drawer. Pulled it.

Then, in the _ring-clack_ of the drawer sliding open, he _moved._

If this had been a deli instead of a bakery, he would have had a better selection of improvised weapons to choose from. As it was, he snatched up a full sheet of thick, chewy sugar cookies— _not_ a traditional Romanian delicacy, but very popular—and flung it corner-first into the throat of the most dangerous-looking attacker, the smallest but the only one who handled his gun like it felt natural in his hand. Not coincidentally, he was also the only one who was pointing at the floor instead of people, and it went off as he stumbled back, choking.

By then Grayson had already lunged over the cash register and grabbed the leader by the throat. He broke the man’s wrist as he dragged him up over the counter, then clubbed him in the temple with the butt of his own weapon, which he let drop into the open cash drawer.

He vaulted the counter as the first body fell, slamming into the panicking blond robber before the man could decide where to direct his fire. Dodging would not have been hard, if the shot had been aimed at him, but it would be expensive to replace the glass case behind him; _Cornulețe_ would have been better off being simply robbed.

That gun, too, wound up in his hand, and he shoved it into the waistband of his pants even as he stomped the blond robber into the floor. Pulled up short of reflexively smashing the man’s nose into his brain, and instead drove a heel into his abdomen, even as he spun to fling one of his hidden knives into the shoulder of the single trained gunman, who had recovered from the cookie-sheet to the larynx and begun moving toward the elderly women. This time, he dropped his weapon, as the knife sank in and the nerves in his dominant arm went dead.

Alina screamed behind the counter, and Grayson whirled again, weight on the heel in the blond man’s gut, to see her smashing another tray of cookies over the head of the leader as he lurched waveringly upright beside the register—Grayson had been too gentle.

That second blow to the skull seemed to fell the moron, however, and the Turkish youth was lurching belatedly forward to try to pin him down in case he woke again, and so Grayson kicked the blond man under the chin for concussion as he continued his half-aborted lunge toward the recently disarmed gunman, who was showing remarkable fortitude by crouching to retrieve his dropped weapon in his off-hand. Grayson seized the foe by his bleeding shoulder, yielding a shout of pain, flipped him onto his back before he could reach the Glock, and struck him over the head where he lay with the first weapon to come to hand, as the frightened old woman cried out in protest against the sudden theft of her cane.

Grayson let it fall as he launched himself upright again, moving to intercept the last intruder, the one he had considered the least threat because he had no gun on him, only a knife. Which was a correct analysis, but _lesser_ was not the same as _not_ , and—

—too late. He had gotten the older child, the female, by the shoulder, torn her halfway out of her mother’s grasp, and was holding a long serrated blade an inch from her neck. “Get—get away!” he shouted.

A tackle would at this juncture be ineffectual. Grayson did not like to lose. Wait for the police? Too many complications. He took a step forward. “Back off!” the man shouted. “I’m warning you! I’ll kill her—there are two more hostages right here!”

“You would never have the chance to lay hands on either of them,” Grayson stated factually.

But that would still be a loss. If a child was murdered in the bakery, Antonin would _wish_ the robbers had been killed instead.

Grayson would also wish it.

He stepped again, to the high quaver of the child’s whimpering, and the blade-edge kissed her neck—it was the jugular and larynx he held it over, however, not the more vulnerable upper point where the carotid artery lay just beneath the skin. Even with that wicked biting edge, it would take a strong hard slice to do real damage there, though the coward’s shaking had already drawn two small points of blood. “Get _away_.” The voice was high with terror.

“Holy _god,_ Anghelescu,” murmured another voice, whose owner he did not have time to categorize.

But now Grayson was only a few feet from the man and _now_ —the stolen gun he had tucked into his waistband was in his hand, leveled on the hostage-taker’s forehead from barely a foot away.

Guns had been only an ancillary part of his training. But he knew every inch of one, all the same. How to locate the safety on even an unfamiliar weapon, the weight of plastic and metal, the smell of smoke and blood after a gunfight, the impact of bullets into bone.

“Will you dirty the floor with your brains?” he asked quietly.

A loud swallowing noise, _nng’gk’,_ and the hand spasmed open, knife falling. The child was allowed to stumble back against her mother’s breast, and the woman clutched her there, whispering prayers and dragging herself and both her offspring away along the glass.

Grayson kicked the knife back, just far enough to be out of easy lunging distance, and gestured with the gun. _Turn around._ “Hands behind your head,” he added. He could have managed to convey that much in Romanian even before he ever set foot in the country, but his accent and grammar were much improved.

The last conscious robber obeyed, pressing his forehead against the glass of the bread cabinet, and now there was finally time to take in the whole of the bakery in more than just tactical flashes.

The leader was being sat upon by the young Turk. The old ladies and the young family had drawn together into a knot; the little boy was picking up the discarded cane for its owner. The blond lay still, but breathed; he could not see whether the man he had bludgeoned with the cane was still alive, but he probably was. Alina was still clutching the weaponized baking sheet; over her shoulder the other apprentices were clustered at the kitchen door, gawking. Dumitrescu was at the front, framed in the doorway. He had been the one to call Grayson by his assumed name.

As he looked toward her, Alina Dalca managed to relax her hold on her improvised weapon. “Has anyone called the police,” she asked.

“I was just—yeah, hang on—” said someone in the kitchen.

“Wait,” Grayson said. There was a flutter of whispers, but they seemed to comply. The police had probably been summoned anyway—there had been a gunshot at the start of the engagement. Over forty seconds ago, now. He would have to act quickly. “You,” he said, singling out the old woman who had not ceased to look furious throughout the entire incident. “Take this. Cover him.” It didn’t matter if she had any actual experience with firearms, the point was to put the threat in the hand of someone who might plausibly fire it.

She approached, but too slowly, so he met her, handed over the pistol grip-first, and headed behind the counter. The kitchen staff parted before him the way crowds had parted all his life—not every crowd, but almost all of those who had known him for what he was.

They knew, now.

One or two trailed after him as he ducked into the cubbyhole of an office which tended to contain Antonin Vasile, when he was not baking. He was away today, negotiating with a catering company, and there was a murmur of protest as Grayson sat down in front of the small installation that allowed for monitoring the security cameras, and set the machines to erase the present tape, which had recorded his fight. No one actually attempted to stop him.

The system was very rudimentary, and Antonin used the same week’s worth of tapes repeatedly rather than stockpiling such dull and unimportant footage. He dug out the tapes made so far this week, and set to erasing them as well. He wanted no record of his face associated with the inevitable rumor. Someone entered the room behind him—by the tread, Alina Dalca. Nothing hostile in her body language.

“The police will be here soon,” she said.

He knew that.

“What should we tell them?”

He took his eyes from his work for a moment to confirm he had not misheard her. No. Her face said that she was waiting for the answer to a question.

 _Tell them nothing. Tell them the precise truth; you have neither the time nor the authority to orchestrate a proper lie before they arrive._ “Whatever you like,” he said. Finished erasing all the available footage—he was sure it would be an inconvenience to Antonin, but he needed it done. With this, even the CIA might identify him, depending on how good President Wilson's descriptions were and the skills of their analysts. Never mind the Court of Owls.

“You saved us,” she said. “We should help you, so…”

He took the photocopy of his false ID from his employee file, since it also had his face, and stood. “Not really,” he said.

Overall, he was embarrassed by his own reactions today. What should have been an unspeakably easy fight had been transformed by a concern for collateral—and by a subconscious realization that killing would worsen the overall results—into a real, if brief, challenge.

And now that his battle-focus had faded, he realized that simply allowing the robbery would have been best from every perspective: it would have minimized risk and alarm to all parties, and cost only a single day’s profits. And he could have kept his job. But his training had not acknowledged such a possibility. Victory was all. Surrender was permissible only when confronted by those in authority, toward whom it was mandatory. These robbers had been interlopers, and weaklings, at that. He had moved without hesitation to discipline them. For moving in on _his_ territory.

It was not his, however. He had only been sheltering here. He walked past Alina Dalca back into the kitchen, made for the back door he had used in his loading and unloading work. The kitchen staff again made way. Some looked frightened but most, he realized suddenly, did not.

He turned to Dalca, who had followed him.

“Tell Antonin,” he said, and then couldn’t think of a message. Thanks might be appropriate—the man had been kind, even if he had been taking advantage of Grayson in his own small way. Apologies might, too, but he refused those. “Goodbye,” he settled on, which was a stupid message, but it was not one he’d ever had reason to leave before. That was something. Another first.

Alina smiled, though it was not very well done. Not up to her usual standards of performance. “I will.”

Peremptory and diffident at once: “Wait.”

It was Dumitrescu. He was holding a bulging white bakery bag, the largest size they had, and for a grey sliding moment Grayson thought he had been conflated with the robbers, and was being offered their intended loot as some kind of protection money.

Then he recognized the shapes of gogoși and cornulețe pressing against white paper, and realized that the man had loaded up a sack of pastries.

“It’s not like you’re going to be sticking around to get your last paycheck, right?” Dumitrescu asked roughly. “Might as well—have these for the road.”

A few of the other apprentices nodded, and Grayson stepped carefully a little way from his escape route to accept the gift. Slunk back, and hesitated a moment, feeling he should probably say _something_ else before going, knowing he could afford to waste no more time.

Alina Dalca gave a little wave. “Good luck, Anghelescu.”

He wanted, for a moment, to say his true name. What had he reclaimed it for, if not to be called by it?

But it was enough to have it in his own thoughts, and he could not afford to leave such clear confirmation of his identity for Owlman to find. He inclined his head in salute, and was gone.

Amandine glaze was melting on Grayson’s tongue when he crossed the Russian border two days later. Every bite tasted like the wind calling him by name.

**Author's Note:**

> I am still not sure how I wound up writing three thousand words set in a Romanian bakery, but I do know I had to stop halfway through to make cherry jam-rolls, because I'd given myself cravings. ^^ Bucharest has a thriving tourism industry, but I've never been.
> 
> 'Cornulețe' is the Romanian for croissant, though of course it’s ‘little horn’ rather than ‘crescent.’ The legend goes that the things were invented to celebrate the Siege of Vienna ending in the retreat of the Ottomans, so I figure Eastern Europe gets naming dibs over France anyhow. Anghelescu is 'Angelson'; Griescu is a real Romanian surname but Dick is _trying_ to be sneaky, and Bruce knows his name.
> 
> (Posting today because it's ready, goshdarnit, stop rewriting the damn thing, and also because I have a scary medical procedure scheduled and want some good news to cheer me up afterward. x_x)


End file.
